Subterfuge
by Asynca
Summary: Maiev Shadowsong is up to something again. Rather than let Tyrande and Maiev duke it out in Stormwind in the middle of the night, Shandris opts to try and deal with it herself. Set after Darkshore in 8.1.


A quiet evening for Shandris and Tyrande—their first since Teldrassil.

Ordinarily the two of them might have sparred a little, or even sat in on the Alliance business in the war room ("It's only right for the humans to have the benefit of our superior wisdom and experience in these matters," Tyrande had sagely told Shandris), but with the warmth of the fire in Tyrande's guest room and piles and piles of communiques from Kalimdor building up on Tyrande's desk, they opted to spend the night in.

At least, that was the plan.

Shandris had been sprawled in front of the fire beside Ash'alah, picking her way through a very, very dry account of the issues plaguing re-establishment of the mines in Dark Shore when there was a knock at the door.

She looked up as a young kaldorei slipped inside. The elf had the scruffy look of a feral druid, and her ears twitched with every sound drifting through the walls of the castle. Clearly, being in a large city made her skittish. "Apologies for the intrusion, High Priestess."

Tyrande lowered the scroll she was reading. "You're not intruding, Salea," she reassured her. "What news do you bring?" To Shandris, Tyrande sounded a little too interested in whatever Salea had to tell her.

Salea seemed relieved. "There is a cargo ship arriving before midnight," she said. "While the harbour master was out signing for another ship, I was able to slip in and take a look at the goods and who was receiving them."

Tyrande leant forward, listening intently. "Oh?"

Salea looked very proud of herself. "You were right. Her name is listed there. As a receiver of two large crates."

Tyrande's brow lowered all the way down over her darkened eyes. "I _knew_ it," she said, sounding vindicated.

Meanwhile, Shandris's eyebrows were in her hairline. She wasn't sure who they were referring to or what was going on. "'Her'?" she asked of Tyrande.

Tyrande barely glanced at her. "Maiev Shadowsong," she said, and then spoke again to Salea, clearly keen to get more detail of this ship. "Do we know what she's receiving?"

Salea shook her head. "Not exactly. However, the customs docket lists the ship cargo as furniture, textiles, various military supplies such as tents and medical kits, and," she swallowed, "weapons."

From her expression, it was immediately clear what Tyrande expected was inside the two crates. "Thank you for coming to me with this, Salea," she told the girl firmly. "I'm sure in time your keen investigation skills will be an immense asset to the kaldorei." Flushing with pride, Salea mumbled some thanks for the compliment and then showed herself out—no doubt retreating all the way to Elwynn Forest.

Shandris waited for her to leave and then sat up from the soft rug. "You're keeping tabs on Maiev? Didn't you two sort things out after Darkshore?"

Tyrande's stormy expression hadn't faded. "We agreed to put our differences behind us yes," she said. "But that doesn't immediately erase all her transgressions against both the Kaldorei and myself, and her long history of making terrible decisions that put us all at risk."

Shandris felt all of her ten thousand years in that moment. "So you don't trust her."

"Of course not. It would be remiss of me to _not _have her followed," Tyrande told her. "She's shipping crates of weapons into Stormwind. Does that not trouble you?"

"Well, we don't know it's weapons," she reminded Tyrande. "It could be anything."

Tyrande scoffed. "Of course it's weapons," she said, giving Shandris a tired look. "What else would _Maiev_ be shipping to Stormwind?"

Shandris had to admit 'weapons' _was _entirely possible with someone like Maiev. "Should we not at least find out what she's up to before we jump to conclusions?"

"I'm not jumping to anything," Tyrande told her. "I've had far more experience with Maiev than you have, I know exactly what to expect of her. I don't know what she's up to, but I'll not allow it." She sighed at length. "I suppose I should go down to the docks and sort out this nonsense."

Shandris grimaced; she could imagine how that scene would play out. The whole of Stormwind definitely did _not_ need to wake to the sounds of Maiev and Tyrande flying at each other's throats in the middle of the night. She needed to prevent that from happening. "Before you confront her, perhaps we should confirm it definitely is weapons? _No_—" Shandris began, pre-empting Tyrande's desire to contradict her, "hear me out. On the off chance it's _not _weapons, you'll look a fool for confronting her about it. You know she'd never let you forget it."

Tyrande sat back in her chair, pursing her lips a moment as she considered that. "You make a good point."

Shandris tried to prevent relief from being visible on her face. She set aside her scroll and pushed herself to stand, groaning a little at the stiffness in her joints. "I was just thinking I would like to stretch my legs, anyway," she lied. She'd been perfectly comfortable by the fire. "I may as well do so by taking a walk down to the docks."

Tyrande spent a short time in thought. "I suppose there's no harm in that," she decided. "But when you find it that it_ is_ weapons, I want you to return to me as quickly as possible so I can put a stop to it."

"Of course," Shandris told her, already dreading that outcome, "you're the best person to manage it if it comes to that." Tyrande was nodding in agreement with her as she showed herself out of the bedroom and headed out into the city.

Stormwind was empty after dark. Two of the districts had popular taverns which sounded to be carrying on strong into the night; other than them, however, it was quiet. Shandris found it quite the odd feeling, big cities being empty at night. Even though she'd been living alongside humans and the other diurnal races for nearly twenty years, she still found it strange how they slept at the most productive time of day. They were always complaining about things like sunburn and the heat, would they not benefit from taking a leaf out of the Kaldorei book and avoiding those things altogether? It was only when she nearly collided with a human on his way home from somewhere that she remembered humans were night-blind. How very inconvenient that must be.

Shandris didn't suffer from that affliction, however, which meant it took her no time at all to spot a dark, caped figure standing on the edge of the docks. Even from this distance, the crescent spines on the figure's shoulders were unmistakable. Aware that Maiev also had excellent vision too, Shandris sank back into the shadows and took the side stairs down to the wharf so as to avoid being spotted.

The cargo ship Salea had mentioned took more time than Shandris had been expecting to dock. For the best part of two hours, Maiev stood alone facing the shoreline.

After the time they'd spent together in Darkshore, Shandris felt a little uncomfortable to be crouched behind the balustrade spying on her. Surely it would be far more appropriate to simply walk up to her and offer to keep her company while she waited as a means of subtly finding out what was in those crates? Stormwind wasn't a particularly large place, it wouldn't unbelievable that Shandris may have happened upon her during a midnight stroll. They were familiar enough with each other that striking up a conversation with her and keeping her company wouldn't necessarily be too unusual a thing to do, either.

Every time Shandris convinced herself to do exactly that, though, she worried about what would happen if Maiev shooed her away: she'd need to go back to Tyrande and explain that she'd simply walked up to Maiev. Tyrande would be both frustrated with her for her naivety _and _angry with Maiev, and then there's been even more of a commotion at the docks afterwards.

No. Rather than confront that possibility, Shandris stayed hidden, crouched uncomfortably in the side stairwell and feeling more and more certain that whatever was in those crates posed no threat to either Tyrande or the Kaldorei. Maiev was a little odd, true—but Shandris hadn't found her company at all unpleasant, and was certain that she was just as committed to their people as Tyrande was. Truly, she should have just stayed in by the fire.

The more Shandris thought about it, the more she decided this vigil was pointless. Maiev wasn't a threat, and she'd hate to know Shandris was spying on her. For Tyrande's sake, though, she intended to see her mission out.

Aside from the harbour master and a scribe, Maiev was the only person who went to meet the ship as it docked. Even the crew on the ship stretched and disappeared below deck; there was no one about to unload any cargo. Despite the pleasant night, everyone was going to bed.

Maiev clearly found this just as unusual as Shandris did. Shandris watched her have a brief altercation with the harbour master (he did well to stand his ground with her for so long given that she very much towered over him) and then eventually his shoulders slumped, he shook his head, and then bid her to follow him on board where he disturbed some of the crew.

Maiev paced the deck as the men disappeared below it; and then rushed over to them when they reappeared, carrying her crates. From her pocket, she produced a key.

Shandris watched as she knelt beside the crates and fit the key into the lock.

_Please be clothes_, Shandris thought, wondering what Maiev even wore under her armour. _Be books, be trinkets rescue from your old house_._ Be anything but—_

As Maiev flipped the lid on the crate and reached inside to carefully check the contents, Shandris saw moonlight glint off a crescent blade. Glaives.

It _was _weapons. Shandris sighed so deeply she scarcely had enough air in her lungs to complete it: Tyrande had been right. Maiev was shipping weapons into Stormwind—even though Shandris had been so certain she wouldn't. She felt her cheeks flush; at times, she often forgot that Tyrande was their leader for a reason.

She had stood to return to Tyrande and reluctantly tell her the bad news, before she remembered the reason she'd intervened in the first place: the thousands of people peacefully asleep in the city around them. Tyrande would almost certainly take a handful of sentinels and immediately confront Maiev in the middle of Stormwind, and Maiev had what appeared to be two enormous crates full of weapons. It didn't seem like a very wise decision to cause an argument between them at this moment.

_Perhaps I can confront Maiev myself, _Shandris wondered, watching Maiev with her precious cargo. After being wrong about the weapons, though, Shandris wondered if she really _wasn't _the right person to handle Maiev. But… perhaps she wouldn't need to even speak to her at all? She could follow her, find out where she planned to store the weapons and then find a way for them—and all the problems they would cause—to simply disappear.

Back on the ship, it was almost as if the crew wanted to help Shandris with her plight. Two men to a crate, they were struggling to carry the cargo down the gangplank, and threatened at any moment to stumble and pitch the crate into the sea below. Maiev was having none of it, however. Throwing her hands in the air, she pushed them brusquely aside, lifted an entire crate under either of her arms, and simply marched down the gangplank as it bowed precariously underneath her weight.

Deciding it was safer to manage the weapons herself rather than return to Tyrande, Shandris followed her up the grand staircase and through the alleys of Stormwind, keeping to the shadows.

The same guards that ordinarily greeting Shandris wouldn't even make eye-contact with Maiev. She stared directly at them as she marched past, almost willing them to stop her about the crates. Fortunately for them, none of them dared.

Shandris followed Maiev through all of the city and out of it again—through the outskirts to a thick wood bordering the mountains. There, Maiev disappeared into an old farmhouse. It had clearly fallen into disrepair many years ago, and all the farmland around it was overgrown and thick with thistles and briars. Plenty of coverage for Shandris to creep through as Maiev carried her crates through the door and inside.

At first, Shandris thought that Maiev would simply conceal the weapons here and then return to the Stormwind. It seemed an ideal place to do so; it was so out of the way and so run-down no one would bother with it. Once Maiev had left again, Shandris could then see about moving the weapons somewhere else and then decided how to deal with Tyrande. It would certainly be safer for Tyrande to come and get angry all the way out here than in Stormwind. All Shandirs needed to do now was wait for Maiev to leave.

However, after some time, Shandris heard the click of firestones and then smelt the bitter smoke of kindling being nursed to flame. Maiev was building a hearth in there?

_That can't be it_, Shandris decided, and crept through the thick overgrown garden closer to the house. That place would be full of mould, debris and all sorts of vermin. It was no place to make a home. Did she plan to burn something in there—evidence, perhaps?

All of the windows seemed to be boarded. Shandris moved slowly around the perimeter of the house, looking for somewhere to peek in. For a house that was so horribly run down, it was surprisingly devoid of cracks and holes.

While she was inspecting the walls for weakness, she could hear all manner of sounds drifting from within. The clank of metal. The groan of a large object being dragged across the ground. Hammering; the hiss of steel being shone. Shandris couldn't even imagine what Maiev could be up to inside.

Eventually, after feeling what seemed to be every blasted inch of wall on this whole big house, she found a window on the far side of the house facing uphill and towards the mountains that still had shutters. Waiting until the sounds appeared to be coming from the opposite side of the main room, she tested the slats. Despite the wood being swollen and hinges being caked with rust, they opened just a fraction, and firelight split out onto the foliage around her. Wide enough for her to peek in.

Taking a deep breath, she spent a moment promising herself that whatever was inside, she was manage the fallout of it. Then, she leant her face up to the tiny gap pivoting the slats and peered inside to see what Maiev was—

—a glowing eye stared back at her, not even an inch from her face.

Yelping in surprise, Shandris vaulted away from the window backwards into a thick patch of briars.

The shutters burst all the way open, revealing Maiev silhouetted against the firelight. From her posture and the needle-thin thread of light glowing from her helm, Shandris could see she was _not _happy. She leant very deliberately on the windowsill as if she was a schoolteacher who'd caught a naughty student in the act of doing something forbidden. "Looking for something, Shandris?"

Untangling herself from the briars, Shandris stood. There really didn't seem to be much she could say to explain herself. "Maiev. I'd really like to say this isn't what it looks like—"

"But it is."

Shandris exhaled. "Yes, it is."

Maiev watched her for a moment. "No doubt _Tyrande_ put you up to this."

Shandris swallowed. "You shouldn't blame her. It was my decision to follow you from—"

"From the harbour."

Maiev had known she was— "If you knew I was following you, why didn't you say something?"

Maiev shrugged. "I wanted to know what Tyrande was up to. I thought you might do something to make clear what that was." She stood from the windowsill. "No matter, you'll simply tell me everything right now. Won't you come in? I've made it ever so comfortable inside." She gestured towards the front door on the other side of the house.

'Ever so comfortable inside'? That sounded rather ominous. Despite how it sounded, and despite just being sprung spying on her, Shandris didn't think there was the sort of animosity between them for her to be in any sort of danger by entering, but… Well, she'd thought Maiev wouldn't be up to anything, either, hadn't she? If there was something terribly secret about what Maiev was doing, Shandris supposed she _might _be in danger.

Remembering something horribly disconcerting about Maiev having captured Malfurion at some point, Shandris rounded the house to the front door. She'd only make everything much worse by running off instead of entering (and she wasn't even certain she _could _outrun Maiev), so there wasn't much she could do except enter and hope things would be alright.

Maiev was waiting for her at the front door, holding it open. Despite the gesture, Maiev's eyes were practically boring holes in Shandris with the intensity of her stare as she walked past Maiev into the abandoned farmhouse.

Inside the house bore no resemblance to the exterior. There was no litter of rotting debris or any sort of mess at all. The room had been cleared of all rubbish, floor had been swept smooth, and the holes in the walls had been patch up. The crates from the cargo ship were in the centre of the room, open, and there were weapons spread out on the floor; as if she was sorting them, perhaps. Shandris could see she was trying to pair up the glaives. There were dozens of them, perhaps a close to a hundred, and they were all in various states of repair as if they'd been salvaged from a hundred separate ruins and shipwrecks. Maiev had clearly been shining and sharpening them as she had her kit out in front of the fire. As Shandris looked to the open fireplace, the light led her eyes up the high walls of the farmhouse.

The wall was _covered _in weapons, all pain-staking placed and hung.

The daggers didn't appear to be in any order until Shandris walked a little close to them; on inspection, she could see the very oldest ones—ceremonial daggers from before the great empire—were on one side of the wall, and a timeline through daggers followed across the whole room until it reached the most modern blades: sleek, smooth and functional, without embellishments. Above them hung larger weapons: the old glaives carried by the Azshari Guard, hunting glaives used by the first sentinels, the ornamental glaives carried by Priestesses of the Temple of Elune. They were glaives Shandris hadn't seen for _thousands _of years.

Shandris found herself silenced by a wave of intense nostalgia; ancient memories of fitting those shining glaives into her hands and feeling them move as an extension of her own body. Memories of looking sideways along the lines and lines of sentinels in formation beside her, and feeling terribly proud to be standing amongst them. Older still, memories of Tyrande taking her hand—much smaller than Tyrande's, then—and showing her how to move a whetstone along a blade to sharpen it. '_Slowly, my child_,' Shandris could still hear her say it. '_It's a gentle movement, not an angry one._' Shandris could remember seeing her face in the blade; her own twisted expression. She was going to get _kill _those who'd slaughtered village with this long, curved blade.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Maiev had moved beside her.

Shaken back to the present, Shandris stared forward at her own face in a blade once more: older. Harder, in some ways, but also infinitely softer. Maiev's was beside her. Shandris could only nod in agreement with Maiev. They _were _beautiful.

Maiev looked up at the wall. "It takes a glaivesmith a thousand years to master her art," she said. "And it _is _an art. Look." She reached up and gently touched the ornate handle of one of the weapons with a gloved hand. Carved into it was a scene lost in time; the Kaldorei defeating the Centaurs. "And to think someone had this piece tucked away in a dark box somewhere." Her lip curled audibly on that. "None of these belong in boxes. They belong on display as the masterpieces they all are."

_On display for who_? Shandris had been about to ask; after all, they were in an abandoned farmhouse. No one except Maiev seemed to come here. As Shandris cast her eyes back to the crates, however, she noticed some details she'd missed: a bedroll, a kettle. A makeshift table and some clean plates on it, waiting to be filled.

"You live here," Shandris realised aloud.

Maiev gave her a sideways glance. "My, my, what a clever little spy you are." Her voice was dry as a bone.

Shandris sighed at her. "I thought you lived in the castle with the other generals."

Maiev was still watching her. "Yes, everyone does."

Unsure what to make of that, Shandris opted to remain silent.

When she didn't speak, Maiev did. "Tell me, Shandris," she began conversationally, "why is Tyrande having me followed?"

Oh yes; that. Shandris found herself with an empty smile as she shook her head. "That is a _very_ good question."

"You expect me to believe you don't know?"

Shandris made eye-contact with her. "Yes, because it's the truth."

Maiev appeared to accept that, taking a few steps walk around Shandris as if she was interrogating her. "Why were _you _following me, then?"

"It seemed like a better option than letting Tyrande tear apart Stormwind in the middle of the night trying to find out if you _had _imported weapons after all."

Unexpectedly, Maiev laughed at that. "Perhaps it was," she agreed, and then her tone sobered. "However, I picked this place far outside Stormwind and out of everyone's way because I like my privacy."

Grimacing, Shandris nodded.

"Furthermore, I seemed to remember an important battle recently." She had done a full circle around Shandris and now stood in front of her, eye-to-eye through her helm. She fixed Shandris with a hard stare. "I'll not fight beside yet another person only to have them sneak around and _betray _me later."

A knot formed in Shandris's stomach. "That's not what this is, Maiev."

At first, it seemed Maiev didn't believe her. Maiev's eyes narrowed in the helm, and Shandris wondered if she was about to feel one of those ornate daggers in her belly.

She needn't have worried, though; after a moment. Maiev took a step back from her. "_Good_," she said darkly. "We're not strangers, you and I, and we're not enemies. Next time you want to know something about me, _ask_." She spent just a second more glaring at Shandris for emphasis, and then walked past her in the centre of the room.

Shandris stared forwards at the daggers hung at eye-level, feeling awfully chastised.

Behind her, she could hear the clatter of Maiev sorting through the weapons again. She stood there for a few moments listening to the ring of steel and nursing the knot in her stomach before she could take it no more. She turned around. "For what it's worth, Maiev, I _am _sorry. My intention was to prevent an altercation, not to cause one."

Maiev paused for a moment by the crate, watching her. In reply, she nodded at the floor. "I have quite a few blades to sharpen. You can start with those." She gestured at a set of glaives close to Shandris's feet.

Shandris looked down at them. They were from the old empire; ornate, beautiful, and hauntingly familiar. She couldn't quite put her finger on where she knew them from, and she would have liked the opportunity to spend some time with them trying to figure that out, but—_no_. She sighed. "Tyrande will worry if I don't return."

"Worry about what?" Maiev prompted, scoffing. "Does she genuinely think I'm stupid enough to—" She stopped herself, laughing darkly. "What am I saying? Of _course _she thinks that! Fine, then." Maiev waved her away. "Go crawling back to her, let her see I didn't capture and torture you. Tell her everything."

"Maiev, that's not what I—"

"Go on!" Her voice sounded harder. "It'll be easier for me to concentrate without you, anyway. At least, it'll be easier until _Tyrande_ comes storming up here to demand every little detail of my existence be reported to her at all times. Maybe I should put the kettle on for—"

"I'm not going to tell her."

That made Maiev look up from the crate. "Of course you are."

"I'm not. At least, not about here."

Maiev's eyes narrowed. "You're going to lie to your own mother?"

Shandris shook her head. "I'm going to tell her exactly what she wanted to know: what you were importing into Stormwind."

"Weapons? I'm sure _that _will wash well with her."

"No," Shandris told her, a faint smile on her lips. It would be a relief to be able to tell Tyrande the truth. "Art."


End file.
